Dr. Goroll is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Physician of the Medical Service at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). He is nationally recognized for his pioneering work in primary care internal medicine. He graduated summa cum laude from Brandeis University in 1968 and cum laude from Harvard Medical School in 1973. Upon graduation he entered the nation’s first primary care residency track in internal medicine at the MGH (a program he helped design and initiate as a medical student). After completing his residency, he began a life-long career at the MGH and Harvard Medical School as a clinician-educator, reformer, and advocate for primary care and general internal medicine.

In 1981 he and his colleagues published the first textbook of primary care internal medicine (Primary Care Medicine), which is now in its 7th edition and considered the standard text of the field. He has served in statewide and national leadership positions in medical education and in professional societies, including joint chair of the SGIM/CDIMCore Medicine Clerkship Curriculum Reform Project, chair of strategic planning for ACGME’s Residency Review Committee in Internal Medicine, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, and Massachusetts governor for the American College of Physicians .

At Harvard he chaired the Core Medicine Clerkship Committee and co-directed the core medicine clerkship at the MGH. His work as a teacher, medical educator, and textbook author was recognized by the Society for General Internal Medicine with its Career Achievement Award in Medical Education and by Harvard Medical School and the Gold Foundation with the Medical Humanism Award. In 2006, he was designated a Master by the American College of Physicians.

His practice reform work has included founding the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative and the Massachusetts Coalition for Primary Care Reform and serving as Chair of Payment Reform for the Patient- Centered Primary Care Collaborative in Washington. He has testified before the U.S. Senate on primary care workforce and payment reform and serves as a regular peer reviewer for leading medical journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA.

He continues in clinical practice, now over 35 years as a primary care general internist for his patients at the MGH and as a precept or and mentor to Harvard students and MGH residents. His hobbies include model railroading and dinghy sailing, having built a small wooden sail boat which he takes out on Nantucket Sound during the summer.